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Shelter

By Kathryn Paulsen

Posted on July 4, 2016

Mom is being buried today. We will never see her face again except in photographs. The coffin lid came down a week ago, forever, or at least the seventy-five years it’s guaranteed. Only seventy-five years, although it’s made of copper the salesman said was indestructible. We’ll all be long gone by then, except for the grandchildren (maybe) and great-grandchild. Something to be said for being buried not too far from Disneyland.

Four months later, on Shelter Island, a cloud is coming toward us, swiftly falling, like the ghost of a meteor about to self-destruct. I can’t tear my eyes away, until it passes— not falling after all, only moving on to the next—house, table, life.

I want it open. Do we all want it open? We take our seats under a shelter, in the heat, before the coffin. No music. One peachy pink spray of flowers at the head from we don’t yet know whom. My sister speaks. I read a eulogy. My father whispers thanks. Even the men are crying. The minister, older, a widower himself, says his piece.

This national cemetery has its procedures we are told we must follow: Go away while they put her in the ground. They won’t let us stay there for that because she’s one of a number to be done today. Should we have asked, pressed, challenged, or is it maybe just as well?

Can’t believe I’m writing this in public at a table on a deck, among new friends, only one of whom knows what happened, more or less, sheltered by hat and tear-concealing dark glasses. Across the table a headline from the Money & Business section: “Knowing when to say ‘sell.'”

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